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Yes, it is a very well made film, though I really didn't like the investigating lawyer with that exaggerated Boston accent. Just annoying.

Old TV and old cinema has been an interest of mine all of my life (my fave tv shows, for example, mostly come before 1975). Oddly, I am 37, so most of those shows were on tv before I was born or in my early youth!

The quiz show scandals were an interest of mine and as a teenager I even poked around the museum of broadcasting in NYC (not the museum of radio & television) for info on it. I always had special contempt for Stempel, parly because he embraced the 'victim' mentality, partly because he is such a whiner and complainer, partly because he allowed himself to be used, but mostly because he seems oblivious to the concept that his 'championship run' was engineered: he was never a legitimate winner on the show anyway, as he was fed the questions, so it's unfair for him to cry foul when it was his turn to be an illegitimate 'loser.'

It's like pro wrestling (one of my other lifelong passions): the champion is hand-picked by promoters. The championship is a prop (closer to being the lead of a popular tv show rather than being any kind of 'winner'). Stempel really believed he was a champion: he never was, he was more like an actor playing a champion. He only cried foul when he became an actor playing a loser. Silly, childish, and immature.

I always thought that the portrayal of Stempel in the movie was fairly damning and that it must have been exaggerated. I have learned since then that, if anything, that depiction is tame and bends over backwards to make him look good.

Herbie Stempel: loser for all the reasons he can't understand. :-)

PS - I don't impute any of this to Carlson, by the way, who I think is a sincere guy. But is he propped up as a silly looking conservative by CNN/MSNBC? No doubt in my mind.

Robert Redford did an outstanding job, and I agree with you about Rob Morrow who played Goodwin. You know he is the Goodwin of Doris Kearns-Goodwin, right?

Turturro was spot on with Stempel and thet entire cast was just fabulous. Especially good was the strainted relationship between Van Doren and his Dad. It's just a marvelous movie about how easily people become corrupted, and for different reasons.